Crime film director relies on instinct

BOB STEVENS

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 3, 1999

SEIJUN SUZUKI'S crime movies from the mid-1960s have made the leap from mass popularity in Japan to art-house respectability in the U.S.

Suzuki is, contradictorily, a naive artist by choice, and his excesses and successes have the same source, a deliberate ingenuousness. His works are examples of the occasional superiority of instinct over a more systematic approach to filmmaking.

"Branded to Kill" (Home Vision & The Criterion Collection / 1967 / b&w / widescreen / DVD: $30) is about a hierarchy of hit men in Japan and the fate of those who are unable to execute a contract. (They're targeted for extermination by their peers.)

The identity of the No. 1 killer is unknown, and the movie's protagonist, who is No. 3, scoffs at the idea of his competitor's existence. Eventually, No. 3 blows a difficult assignment himself, killing an innocent bystander, and discovers that the premier gunman is all too real.

The power of "Branded" lies in Suzuki's indifference to the requirements of a unifying tone. In its place, he offers a mixture of absurd fetishism, striking symbolism, ingenious action and extremely stylized designs.

In an unexpected comic touch, No. 3 is shown to be obsessed with the aroma of boiled rice because it renews him in the same way spinach restores Popeye's strength! This fixation seems as vital to him as calisthenic sex, in which he and his nihilistic, traitorous wife struggle toward an ecstasy beyond orgasm.

But No. 3 meets Misako, a female assassin who has such a pure, mask-like beauty that her visage begins to haunt him in reflections, in shadows, in storms. However, she hates men and kills in the hope of being killed. The young woman's death wish is underscored by her compulsive attraction to birds and butterflies, exquisite creatures that are capable of flying away.

Misako's sense of helpless captivity is evident in the decor of her apartment: Hundreds of butterflies are impaled by pins on the walls and suspended as mobiles, as if they were aerial souls prevented from leaving. She also has a bird with a nail in its throat hanging from the rear-view mirror of her car. These apparently sadistic, but essentially masochistic, acts are agonizing reminders of the way she believes things are, in spite of her dark escapist dreams.

In a sequence that transcends the literalism of contemporary cinema, No. 3 flees Misako after she tries to kill him, defeated by the realization that he can't bring himself to retaliate against her. He roams the streets dejectedly, and the environment is suddenly transformed by his feelings of failure:

We hear the flutter of wings, and shifting, decorative patterns of birds appear. We hear rain but see, instead, drawings of diagonal white lines. Then the empty shape of a single bird and a blank white butterfly, omens of his fantasy lover's extinction, are superimposed on the frame. These images burst forth in wild, intermittent rhythms and the reassuring, recognizable order of the city gives way to graphic seizures of an imperiled mind.

By means of these departures from a naturalistic presentation - especially in the way designs force us to confront the actual in a jarring invocation of its opposite, the artificial - we experience No. 3's schizophrenic withdrawal.

In another of Suzuki's remarkable inventions, the mirage of film is intentionally confused with reality: A short reel of Misako being held hostage is left at No. 3's place to taunt him. Frantic over her disappearance, he tries to grasp the projection of her sacrificial figure (she's tied up, being tortured), asks her flickering face desperate questions ( "Where are you?" ) and tries to decipher the answers formed by her wavering mouth.

But it is No. 3, not Misako, who's really trapped. The necessity of defending himself, the unavoidable pursuit of his tormentor, leads to personal ruin and tragedy.

Suzuki's movies are so lurid visually and pulp-like in narrative that the most common taste is satisfied. But in their wondrous incongruities, we encounter an idiosyncratic, delirious poetry.

"Drifter" alludes to the bravado and brawling humor of Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns (which are, themselves, derived from the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa), and the progenitor of them all, the American cowboy movie. Unfortunately, these elements of homage come across as crude parody in cross-cultural translation.

Still, there are some remarkable things in the staging of the final shootout. To get to the man who betrayed him, the alienated hero must go through a corridor of modernized, church-like arches. In this piece of architectural symbolism, there's the suggestion that the ex-criminal's desire for revenge has been sanctified by his passage through the serial structures.

The climactic battle occurs in an all-white expanse, a theatrical space with scattered props - fluted columns, an ivory-colored piano and several sets of stairs. The scene is dominated by an extenuated form of a man holding a doughnut shape, a crimson torus, overhead. The statue's exalted torus is drained of its bloody hue after the gunfight and, when the hero kisses his girlfriend in farewell, it turns carnation yellow.

Color schemes with psychological referents are crucial to Suzuki's dramatization of events, and the movie's ambient mode might be described best as hallucinatory pop. The designs are so dynamic they verge on chaos, and they're awash in a pandemonium of color.

"The Beast With Five Fingers" (Image Entertainment & Warner Home Video / 1947 / b&w / LD: $35) is a great horror film about a dead pianist's severed hand that crawls about a mansion, seeking revenge on those who have forsaken him.

Peter Lorre is unforgettable as a man destroyed by guilt, and director Robert Florey is an expressionist master whose style emphasizes every paranoid shiver Lorre's character feels and makes his feverish delusions terrifyingly concrete.

Superman and the Mole Men" (Image & Warner / 1951 / b&w / LD: $30) is a low-budget, short feature that preceded the TV show: little Mole Men from inside the Earth climb up the world's deepest oil well and terrify a small town. Inevitably, the citizenry's fear turns into homicidal outrage, and only Superman can save the innocent subterraneans.

In "Armageddon" (Image & Criterion / 1998 / widescreen / LD: $100), the world heads for a collision with an asteroid and NASA responds with a plan to have oilfield roughnecks blow it up from inside. This elaborate edition gives the summer blockbuster the treatment ordinarily reserved for film classics.

"Tom & Jerry: The Movie" (Image & MGM-UA Home Entertainment / 1992 / LD: $30). The rodent who escaped his verminous background to become a little hero and the lovable cat who's portrayed as a slapstick predator unite for a feature film. They help a runaway girl, are temporarily imprisoned and lead an animal jailbreak. Directed by Phil Roman.

Artisan Entertainment has two new television-oriented DVDs, "The Temptations" (1998 / $20), a miniseries on the famous rock group, and "Ringmaster" (1998 / widescreen / $30), a movie that capitalizes on the rep of its star, freakshow host Jerry Springer. Alan Arkush directed the former and Neil Abramson made the latter.

Pioneer Entertainment has released another Artisan title, "Rambling Rose" (1991 / widescreen / $30), and it's loaded with supplemental material. Robert Duvall, Laura Dern and Lukas Haas are featured in "Rose," and Martha Coolidge directed.&lt;